


The Hidebound Journal

by toushindai (WallofIllusion)



Category: Bastion (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene, Restoration Ending (Bastion), is that how you tag that it's not the first time through? well it's how I tag it at least
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-03
Updated: 2018-09-03
Packaged: 2019-07-06 12:38:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15886230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WallofIllusion/pseuds/toushindai
Summary: Conflict erupts over the hidebound journal the kid brought back from Prosper Bluff. [missing scene fic]





	The Hidebound Journal

**Author's Note:**

> Show of hands, who tries not showing the journal to Zulf your second time through? Yeah that doesn't achieve anything, does it.

The journal is all cramped notes and rough diagrams, Venn’s handwriting so haphazard that it would be a challenge to decipher even if he’d written in the language of the City. But it’s written in his native tongue, and Rucks answers the kid’s hopeful glance with a shrug.

“My Ura ain’t that great,” he says. “Zulf’ll have a better chance of reading it than I will. Why don’t you show him?”

The kid’s brows contract. “I don’t know,” he says, averting his gaze. “Something about it makes me nervous. You really can’t read it?”

“Not quickly.” Rucks can make out a few words here and there, but to actually pick out what it’s saying, he’d need a lot of time and maybe a dictionary.

The kid leaves it with him anyway, rather than showing Zulf, and he heads out to the edge of the Wilds with a musket slung over his shoulder. “Be careful, okay?” he says to Zia before he goes, even though the worst that could happen already has. Rucks scoffs at the unnecessary warning as artless flirting.

But try as he might, he can’t convince himself of his own nonchalance. He’s been uneasy since the kid brought that notebook to the Bastion, too, a sick sense of premonition in the pit of his stomach. Maybe he will work on Venn’s journal after all. It’s something, at least, to keep him from dwelling on his sense of déjà vu and the Bastion and what those two things might mean together.

An hour later, though, he’s two uninteresting pages in, and the only things he’s learned are that Venn hated his job and that Ura still gives him a headache. It would be easier if Zia weren’t humming, but Rucks isn’t about to stop her; he admires her optimism. He wishes he could feel the same way. By all rights, he _should_ : all the kid has to do is find that last core and they’re home free. They’ll go back to before the Calamity. The City will remake all its decisions, and hopefully this time it’ll do a better job. In a sense, it doesn’t even matter what’s in this journal.

But he can’t get rid of this lingering apprehension, so he keeps reading. Or at least trying to.

“Do you need some help?”

Rucks is so caught up in his thoughts that he jumps when Zulf touches his shoulder. The startle response makes sense. The way his stomach plunges with suspicion and fear doesn’t so much. He’s been feeling this ever since the kid brought Zulf back, to his own frustration. He thought he’d left all his old racial sentiments behind; there’s no point in resenting or fearing the Ura anymore. And it certainly doesn’t make sense to resent or fear Zulf. He’s a gentleman, learned and kind; he believes in nothing so much as peace between the Cael and the Ura. That’s something few Caelondians ever bothered to believe in.

So maybe that’s why Rucks sighs and hands the journal over. “Need more than just help,” he confesses. “My Ura was never this good. You want to take a crack at it? Translate it for our little songbird over there?”

“I could do that.” Zulf accepts the journal, but his eyes are on Zia. “It’s a tragedy that she wasn’t taught any of her own language.”

“Well, it’s outlawed within City limits,” Rucks says practically.

A strain appears on Zulf’s face. “I wish it weren’t. We have so much to learn from each other, the Ura and the Cael.”

“I agree wholeheartedly, but I’m just sayin’, Venn had enough reason to avoid teachin’ her anything that might bring the wrath of the Marshals down on her head.” Given that she gets twitchy when the kid flashes the badge he picked up, might be that Venn wasn’t entirely successful in shielding her.

But Zulf doesn’t pursue that line of thought any further. Instead, he tilts his head. “You speak of her father rather familiarly. Did you know him?”

Rucks shrugs, hesitates; then decides that there’s nothing stopping him from being honest. “We were distant coworkers, you might say,” he explains. “Both Mancers. Our paths crossed once or twice.”

“Mancers,” Zulf repeats with wariness in his voice. “Are you sure I should be reading this journal, then?”

“Well, if there were any City left to speak of, I’d be on the hook for treason just for handin’ it to you. But there ain’t no one left for whatever’s in that journal to hurt.”

Zulf sighs heavily. “I suppose you’re right. I’ll see what I can do.”

*

So Rucks leaves the journal with Zulf and tries to think no more of it. The kid will be back soon, and anyway it looks like rain, so he goes down to the Bastion’s heart and checks it against his own notes. Everything looks to be in place. As long as the principle behind the restoration function is solid—and he flatters himself that it is—then they should be able to undo the Calamity just as soon as the kid brings back that last core. Then everything Rucks has put him through will be worth it, and it’ll be erased anyway. He wonders what the kid’ll do once he gets off his absurd second tour on the walls. Briefly, Rucks indulges in the fantasy of remembering just enough to find him and take him on as an apprentice. He may not have the subtlety of thought expected of a Mancer, but he’s not an idiot. He’s effective. Sometimes that’s what the Mancers value most of all.

He’s disturbed from his task when the Bastion gives a great shudder, and his stomach plunges. _Not again_ is his first thought, but he doesn’t stop to figure out why. As fast as his legs and his cane will take him, he climbs up to the Bastion’s surface—

Just in time to see a rain-drenched Zulf raise the kid’s hammer over his head and swing it down against the Monument. Metal resounds against stone and Rucks’ ears ring.

“Hey!” he thunders. “What are you doing?!”

Zulf doesn’t stop. He raises the hammer again with a strained grunt and lets gravity and the hammer’s weight do his dirty work. The Monument fractures under his assault with an enormous crack, and blood pounds in Rucks’ ears. He hobbles forward over the slippery stone, barely taking the time to curse his old body or wish that the kid had come back faster before he’s shouting again.

“Zulf, what in Mother’s name are you doing?” he demands. “That Monument is our only hope!”

“Your only hope of what?!” Zulf whirls around as Rucks nears. He slips in the rain and the hammer’s weight nearly overbalances him, but he catches himself. “Of finishing off the Calamity’s work, of murdering the rest of my people?”

“What?” Rucks asks in genuine confusion.

Patience and despair alike are gone from Zulf’s face; instead, it’s twisted with loathing. Rucks can hardly believe this is the same self-appointed diplomat that the kid brought back from the Hanging Gardens. “Don’t you dare play the fool with me, old man—”

“Zulf? Rucks?” Zia runs up as if to get between them. “What’s going on?”

“Stay back!” Rucks orders, warning her away with an outstretched arm. She falters, looking back and forth in confusion.

Something unreadable flashes across Zulf’s face. “You think I’d hurt her?”

“I don’t know _what’s_ gotten into you!” Rucks growls in answer. He takes one more step forward and reaches for the hammer to pull it out of Zulf’s grasp. “Why don’t you put this down and—”

“No!”

Zulf grapples with the hammer and shakes him free. Rucks falls backwards with an undignified, muddy _flump_. A jolt of pain shoots up his tailbone and down his calves.

“Zulf, what are you doing?” Zia rushes forward to help, but they both ignore her.

“What the hell is wrong with you, Zulf?” Rucks demands.

But Zulf only spits a question in return. “How much did you know about the ‘peace project’?”

All the air goes out of Rucks at once and he goes pale. Instinctively, he tries to protest ignorance, but he can’t do it. He can’t. He’s known the whole time that the Calamity had the marks of Mancer tech, he’s just tried to pretend not to. “What did Venn do?” he asks, his voice trembling.

“My father?” Zia asks faintly. “Zulf, what does my father have to do with this? Is this about his journal?”

Rucks glances her way and sees that her pale skin is even paler with alarm. His stomach drops, some instinctive dread telling him that she deserves better than to hear whatever’s made Zulf so furious. “Zia, this doesn’t—”

“ _You want to know what he did, Rucks?_ ” Zulf switches suddenly into Ura, his voice cold. “ _He turned the Cael’s own weapon against them._ ”

His words come as quick and vicious as their machetes as he explains, and it’s a struggle to keep up, but Rucks doesn’t need to catch every word to follow the story. The Mancers had Venn on the peace project, searching for something to prevent future war between the Cael and the Ura. He found a way to seal the Ura tunnels with the Ura trapped inside. They told him it would only be used in an emergency. He didn’t believe them, or maybe he just didn’t care. He set his weapon to backfire if they ever did use it. To take down the Cael along with the Ura.

To cause the Calamity.

Rucks’ heart pounds as Zulf finally falls silent. Zia speaks before he can, Zulf’s tirade gone over her head because the girl can’t speak her own inherited language. “Zulf, what did you say?” When Zulf just looks back at her, jaw set, she looks at Rucks instead. “What did he say?”

Rucks feels sick. “Never mind,” he says. “Stay out of this.”

“But—”

“Forget it, Zia,” Zulf says, speaking Cael once more.

“You’re talking about _my father_ —”

“Stay out of it!” Rucks and Zulf snap, almost in sync. Zulf glares at Rucks as if angry that he, too, cares to protect Zia from despair.

Rucks tries to find the words. “Zulf,” he says, “no one wanted _this_ —”

Zulf sneers. “No, you just wanted my people safely disposed of!”

“That wasn’t the point!” Rucks retorts, but it’s a poor defense and he knows it. He swallows hard and makes himself say, “Listen, the peace project was—bad. Ain’t a single good thing that’s come out of it. But that’s what the Bastion is for, all right? To keep people safe. And if you go _destroyin’ it_ —”

“Then the Cael will fall once and for all!” Zulf finishes for him.

Mother, he’s righter than he knows. “You don’t understand what the Bastion’s capable of—”

“You’ll forgive me if I’m not exactly keen to find out,” Zulf snarls. “You, and your Bastion, and your entire damn City can go to hell. If I have to—”

But the shattered stone at his feet takes on a blue sheen suddenly, just before the Bastion shakes with an impact. The kid. He’s back.

Zulf’s eyes dart towards the skyway and he swears under his breath. He’s afraid of the kid, Rucks realizes, and some vindictive part of him feels smug at the realization. Zulf deserves to panic after what he’s done to the Bastion. The core won’t be enough to fix this.

But Zulf only grimaces and throws the hammer down at Rucks’ feet. “ _I’m going home_ ,” he says in Ura. “ _If any of my people are left alive, you’ll see them soon._ ”

Rucks’ smugness falls away and it’s his turn to feel fear. “Zulf, what are you thinking?”

Zulf sends a long glare his way as the kid runs up, baffled.

“Rucks? Zia?” The kid looks at Zulf like he doesn’t want to believe what he’s seeing. “Zulf, what’s going on?”

Zulf’s eyes pass over the kid once, and then he turns away. “The Calamity failed,” he says in a low, trembling voice. “But I will not.”

He storms towards the skyway, and the kid doesn’t even grasp the situation well enough to try to stop him. He hurries to Rucks instead, to help him up. He and Zia get Rucks to his feet together, and Rucks thanks them for their attention.

But his heart is still racing, and even with his cane back in hand, he’s never felt so unsteady.


End file.
